A Kinder, Gentler Republican President Is Dead

And so is everything he represented about the office.

by Todd S. PurdumDec 1, 20184 minutes

Source: Jim Young / Reuters

He was the last of his kind—the sort who could hold his office without embarrassment or apology, who wore his wartime heroism lightly, who took his duty seriously, but never himself. In contrast to the incumbent of the Oval Office, he looms in memory as the valiant remnant of a Periclean age.

So people can be forgiven if they forget that, in his prime, George Herbert Walker Bush was mocked as a stand-pat, in-box president, a “lap dog” who lacked “the vision thing,” who had put his “manhood in a blind trust” in eight long-suffering, loyal years as Ronald Reagan’s: “Message: I care!”